Silent Lightning
by Junivere Violet
Summary: Confesssions of the nonconformist mind. Thoughts of the outcast and the offical freak. A collection of short stories highlighting the life of the notsopopular.


**whoot whoot! I am totally not dead yet. sorry for abandoning people for a very long while. sorry for not being here all the time, or at any time for the moment, but it was diffiscult for a while. oh well, the muse is back, and with a vengence!**

I stared at the blank piece of paper in front of me. There was nothing on it, obviously, but there was something odd about that certain piece of paper. Don't go jumping to conclusions that I am just some insane teenager, but you have to understand what I have been through. My mother left me when I was eight, my father is a drunk, and everyone in my school hates me. I get through it, it's not like other kids don't go through the same thing too. That's why I am a little wary about that certain piece of paper.

One of the jocks in my class was passing out the paper (as usual) and (as usual) had purposely not given me one. Then something strange happened. The new girl had turned around called him an ass and had gotten up and gave me the paper in front of me.

And now we are at the beginning.

Please understand the supposed 'reasoning' behind their discrimination of me. I live in a very poor neighborhood. There are fights on my street and in front of my house all of the time, gunshots? Nothing new to me. Death, fire, destruction, and any other possible thing that could possibly go wrong? Just another day in my town. Last year, I got a scholarship to this high-strung school in the West side and I obviously went, eager to learn everything that I couldn't where I live.

Unfortunately, everything didn't go according to plan.

When I got into school that day after I got the scholarship, I had a pile of fan mail in my locker. I didn't even know my locker combonation yet, and I had enemies. They didn't like the lower class from the East side coming into their territory of Corvets, drinking booz, and smoking some very expensive crack. In all actuality, there is no difference between the West and East side of town. The only difference is that the one has more money than the other.

But getting back to the point of this….

Not even in the school for more than ten minutes, I had a black eye. Some stupid kid had decided to just calmly walk up to me and punch me in the eye. A great start to the rest of my life, right?

As if being a kid from the East side wasn't enough of a reason for them to jump me almost everyday, I was a bit of a goth. I liked the color black. It seems very slimming to me. The people here apparently don't approve of people being different than the other people that they have. I stuck out like a sore thumb my first day there.

There was everyone. They were all dressed in their preppy clothes with their expensive jewelry and toys. They all had pastels on and they all made themselves pretty with their make-up and almost anorexic bodies (boys included on this one). The jocks were dressed in the things that their girlfriends had picked out the night before so that they would match on the first day of school. (This meant to any new person that this was that girl's boyfriend. If you try to take him, then faces the consequences. It's almost like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. They're marking their territory. It's essentially the same thing… except with matching outfits and not urinal waste.)

Then there was me.

I was dressed in my favorite skirt, a vivid purple that had slits cut out and had a piece of chiffon-like fabric with a wild array of colors on it. Strips of that random fabric hung freely from the tops of the slits. I had a black v-necked tank top and a black blouse over it. I had my worn out combat boots and black dance tights on. I wore that outfit on special occasions only; I didn't want anything to ruin it. I loved it way to much.

Everyone just stared at me as I walked into the school. This was the nicest outfit I had, and I rarely ever wore an actual skirt (skirts are impractical when you're trying to fight for your life. Also, they put thoughts into some people's heads, and that's never good.). They talked about me when I was standing right in front of them, at one point I turned around and flipped out.

"If you want to make a jest about the way I dress, I would much rather you do it to my face instead of behind me. And don't look so shocked, you were talking quite loudly, and it just so happens I forgot to turn off my ears this morning. My mistake." I snarled and walked into the brightly lit principal's office. A young secretary looked up and saw me there, she smiled cheesily.

"Sorry deary, you must have the wrong school. How about you call your Mommy and Daddy and ask them to pick you up. Do you know where they work?" she asked me and started to get out a bottle that was filled with lollipops. I was appalled.

"Sorry ma'am, but I do belong here. I was told to come and collect my class schedule and slip. I am the scholarship student." I smiled warmly at her. She kept up the smile, but her eye was twitching. It was quite funny. She looked like Barbie, except this one was Homicidal Barbie.

Miss. Squalie handed me the important papers that I needed, but she did it in such a fashion that she wouldn't have to touch me. Not even the adults here are willing to touch the East-sider. Go figure.

My thoughts were snapped back to the present when I heard the door slam shut. It was my favorite class of the day, with the teacher from hell who hates me with such a passion that he is purposely failing me. Purposely! The teacher's name: Mr. Headkin, I liked to call him Satan's Minion. (Beelzebub was already taken… that is what I call my neighbors dog.)

He chose to see what he wanted, and he sometimes even made things up to got girls to have detention with him. If you're a girl and you wear a really short skirt and skimpy top on the day of a test, then he just gives you an A. Truly and absolutely serious. He actually got sited because a girl reported him for sexually harassing her, unfortunately, there wasn't enough evidence to get him fired and put in prison. The girl transferred to another school in the beginning of the year because she had gotten him again.

Today we had our first lesson on the ancient Greeks. No matter what anyone says about how stupid they think I am, I love history. Especially the Greek and Roman empires. They made so many advancements, and they lived in ancient times, and we can't even compare to the tiniest bit of what they did. Isn't it amazing? The people back in ancient times who are consider 'primitive', made the basis of what we go by today.

Mr. Headkin was starting to put the notes on the board when I had brought out my notebook for a moment. It was my random insanity notebook, a place where I can keep my thoughts, my stories, poems, songs, and deepest secrets. One of the jocks (who claimed one of the back seats before I could, and had already made his permanent slouching kingdom) looked over my shoulder. I knew he was because of two reasons, one is that I can tell when someone is reading over my shoulder, and two… well he isn't any ninja I have ever met.

I turned around to face him. "Can I help you in some way? Do you feel a need to look over my shoulder and annoy me?"

He smiled and didn't reply.

Aggravated, I turned back around and jotted something very quickly on the very few blank pages I had left in my notebook. Before Headkin could turn around and accuse me of disrupting the educational process, I threw it underneath my desk. He had turned around to see what the commotion was, and I could feel his eyes on me. Brazenly, I looked up and stared back, almost urging him to go on with the lesson that we were supposed to be doing. He glared at me for another moment then turned to face the chalkboard again, talking about the advancements that people like Thales, Aristotle, Pythagorus, and many more made.

A sudden ripping sound exploded from behind me. My face blanched and I thought I was going to be sick. No one was suicidal enough to rip up their notes for Headkin's class, and no one else had paper with them, so I used my deductive reasoning to figure out what it was.

One of the Slouchers had seen me with my notebook and stole it from underneath my desk. Brian (that was the bastards name), got up and stood in front me, ripping piece after piece out of my notebook and then ripping them further. Headkin smiled to the board, and continued on with the lesson. As I saw page after page being torn out, I decided that I couldn't bear to hear that destructive sound anymore. I pulled out my ancient CD player and headphones, cranked up the volume, and let the screaming band drown out the sound of ripping paper and lost memories.

When Headkin heard my music playing, he started to yell, people turned around to look at me and they laughed, Brian was still ripping pages from my notebook, and some people had begun to read the broken words on the cold floor. All of those noises were too loud and my music wasn't drowning them out. I kept turning it louder and louder, people kept yelling, laughing, talking, and ripping. I wanted to cry then and there, but that would have been even worse, so I just concentrated on the music. Music is my sanctuary, and no one could take that away from me.

The jock behind me and the girl who had given me the piece of paper at the beginning of class both stood up. Paper Girl started to yell at Headkin for not making Brian stop ripping my notebook, and Ninja Boy took the back my mutilated notebook and started to yell at Brian for doing that in the first place. With those two scolding and yelling, holding their ground to help me when I wasn't even going to help myself, I was surprised. No one, not my parents, not any adult I have ever met, or any person that I have met, has ever done something like that before.

"DETENTION! ALL THREE OF YOU! DETENTION, DETENTION, _DETENTION_! SIT DOWN!" Headkin yelled. When he did, everyone shut up, just then the bell rang, and people were stepping on my papers, shoving them this way and that so that I would be late for my next class.

I sighed, people annoy.

Turning off my music, I stuffed my headsets back in my bag and got on my hands and knees, trying to catch the papers before the wind blew from the window. Another surprising thing happened; Paper Girl and Ninja Boy stayed behind and helped me clean up the papers. Both of them smiled at me, and I gave a half smile back. Ninja Boy was shocked, ever since I got to this school I had never before cracked any kind of smile, besides the sarcastic ones and the grimaces of pain.

"I hope that you both know you have officially resigned your status by helping me. You better be ready to live with the consequences…. Which usually involve a lot of pain, if you want to get technical." I warned them, they were nice people. I didn't want them to get hurt on my behalf… that would be wrong of me.

Paper Girl looked as if I had just slapped her in the face. "What they did to you was very wrong. And I may be new here, but I am not stupid. I can tell that becoming friends with that crowd would be the biggest mistake of my life. You, on the other hand, you are like a breath of fresh air for this place. Those butt-munches just don't know it yet." I gave a quiet chuckle at 'butt-munches'. She put down the papers she was organizing and held out a hand. "My name is Charlotte. Charlotte Luding."

I took the offered hand and shook it. "Jade Synergy."

Ninja Boy took that time to trip over a chair leg and ruined the moment. I laughed, and he looked surprised, but then started to laugh too, as did Charlotte. He put the papers inside my anorexic notebook and held out a hand also. "The name is Jack, Jack Greene."

"Jade Synergy, glad that we could have a proper introduction." I smiled at him and he smiled back.

That was my time of realization. I had just made the strongest bond that I ever could with two of the people I thought were going to go against me too. Yes, there were still a lot of problems in my school and in my life, but at least now, I had people I could share those times with. Now I won't be so completely alone. Now, I actually had friends.

**happy ending, right? i was going to make it sad, but she went through enough already, soI cut her a break. mucho thanks to Dracozchick who told me that it didn't competely suck. so i was grateful for that. and always remember, somebody's got to be unafraid to lead the freak parade!**


End file.
